The effects of smoking on cognition

You stubbed the Wills and took up the Paan Parag habit instead. Before you start feeling smug, get a load of this: All forms of tobacco can cause heart attack. It hardly matters whether you smoke cigarettes, cigars, a pipe, or bidis, or chew tobacco. Any tobacco use at least doubles the risk, and in some cases quadrupled it, according to a Canadian study in the Lancet.

In related news, Scottish researchers measured the effects of smoking on cognition — and it doesn’t look good for nicotine addicts. The study compared how well a group of people scored on IQ tests at ages 11 and 64, and revealed that lifelong smokers have a small but significant drop in ability, even if education and economic factors are taken into account.
Which makes you ask: Do you have to be dumb to smoke, or does smoking make you dumb?